A. The writer(s), the place, and the time: The Song of Songs was written by Solomon in Israel during his later years and is just as difficult to understand as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
B. The subject: loving the Lord to experience Him as life for the building up of His Body, the bride.
C. The background: This book follows Ecclesiastes and is in contrast with and supplementary to it. Ecclesiastes tells us that if man abandons God and seeks anything under the sun, the result is “vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” The Song of Songs tells us that if man yearns for the Lord, pursuing everything in Christ, the result is satisfaction of satisfactions, all is satisfaction.
Poetry is the expression of the moving within the human heart, the writing of the experiences of human life. These five books of poetry—Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs—also show forth the good pleasure of the Holy Spirit, telling of our experiences and seekings along the spiritual way. Through suffering (Job), we are brought into prayer and fellowship in the presence of God (Psalms), through which prayer we receive wisdom and revelation (Proverbs) and are ushered into the realization of the vanity of all things apart from God (Ecclesiastes) and the satisfaction in Christ (Song of Songs).
D. The central thought: The believers need to seek after the Lord to fellowship with Him in love. This seeking causes them to get out of themselves through the work of the cross and to be transformed by the Spirit. The result is the Body of Christ, the bride of Christ ready to be raptured into the wedding feast with the Lord.
E. The general sketch: Some say that Solomon wrote this book based on one of his own love stories, which may have taken place as follows:
In Ephraim, Baalhaman, Solomon had a vineyard which he gave to a family of the people of Ephraim to take care of. Their father had evidently already died. Their mother had at least two sons and two daughters; the two daughters were the Shulamite and her younger sister (1:6; 8:8). When she was at home, the Shulamite’s older brothers abused her, forcing her to give up her own vineyard to take care of theirs, and also compelling her to shepherd their sheep, so that her face became blackened by extended exposure to the sun. One day a handsome young man in shepherd’s garb came from far away, paying particular attention to the young woman and making friends with her. Then the Shulamite said, “Look not upon me, because I am swarthy, because the sun has scorched me. My mother’s sons were incensed against me; they made me keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest thy flock” (1:6-7). The shepherd responded by calling her “fairest among women” (1:8). After a while, they fell in love. One day, the shepherd bid her farewell, promising to return soon to marry her. But after he left, there was no news from him. Although the other people around her told her that she had been tricked by the shepherd, she refused to listen, firmly believing that their engagement was irrevocable. After waiting for a long time without his return, she longed for him so much that she felt sick, sometimes imagining that she saw him. Then one day she noticed clouds of dust flying up along one of the mountain roads of Ephraim, as if many carriages were approaching. Soon a messenger arrived, informing her that the king was on his way to marry her. At first, the Shulamite did not know what to say, but as soon as she caught sight of the king, she recognized him as her beloved shepherd, so she cried out triumphantly, “I am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me” (7:10). (This is also the story of each one of us. From Genesis all the way to Revelation, the whole Bible is a record of how our good Shepherd left His glory and His throne to come to earth to seek out His bride of lowly birth. When He had found her, He left her for a while, promising that He would come back to claim her. Now we are in the time of waiting. May we have as much faith, patience, longing, and fervent love as the Shulamite had, and may we have the same cry as she had—“Make haste, my beloved, to come!”)
F. The sections: 1) initial seeking and satisfaction (1:1—2:7), 2) the calling to put off the self (2:8—3:5), 3) the calling to ascend to the heavens (3:6—5:1), 4) after resurrection, the more severe calling of the cross (5:2—6:13), 5) God’s work (ch. 7), and 6) the sighing of the flesh (ch. 8).